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LeftSkidLow

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Posts posted by LeftSkidLow

  1. Posted

    OK well that's a cool story if it were true, you must be assuming I was talking about auto-trim. Manual cyclic trimming is found in every helicopter in real life and is implemented in ToH correctly. There is no true center position for a cyclic, only a perceived center that is created by springs and usually adjusted with electric motors.

    If you want to fly realistically, you need to be using manual trim and you need to be using it ALL THE TIME. Take the MD-500 for example, it has no hydraulic system and no stability augmentation (except the NOTAR's YSAS). Every control is directly connected with push/pull rods and pulleys. Now imagine the forces of that giant 5 bladed gyroscope spinning above your head powered by about 400 horse power. Gyroscopes don't like to move, especially giant 5 bladed ones, so cyclic inputs in the 500 can get tiring fast. Luckily the 500 has cyclic trim, which makes the stiff cyclic not such a big deal. When the trim system fails they actually recommend that you hold the cyclic with your knees so you don't run your arm strength down.

    Ok, so for the part you actually care about, manual Trim in ToH.

    -To initiate manual trim, scroll through your action menu with the middle mouse wheel and middle click on "Manual Trim Set."

    (In your helicopter controls, you will need to have set keys for trimming functions (trim forward, trim left, trim right trim down). It's best to find buttons on the joystick or keyboard that are in a cross layout. For example, numpad 8 for trim foreward, numpad 4 for trim left, etc. A joystick hat button would be the most realistic but not really practical unless you use trackIR or something.)

    -Let's say you are in level forward flight and the nose keeps climbing and rolling right. You could hold the stick down and left, or better yet, you could tap the forward and left trim keys a few times to adjust the center of the cyclic. It may take a few adjustments to get it right, this is normal, even in real helicopters.

    -Expect to have to continually change trim adjustments as you change airspeed or weight, this is also normal in real helicopters.

    -For taking off, you can get it light on the skids and try to feel what the helicopter is trying to do and trim against it. The most important factor here is practice and knowing how the helicopter will want to behave as it leaves the ground. Trim won't save you here but it can be convenient.

  7. Posted

    Place an md500 in the editor and put this in the init field:

    this setCustomWeightRTD 475

    The problem with this, is that because TKOH does not simulate translational lift, taking off becomes very unrealistic as you have to add more and more torque. The good part is, it makes flat pitch descent rates more realistic and lifting off from a hover requires more collective and little bit more torque.

    I didn't really try autorotations yet but it should in theory, help keep the RPM in the green.

    The moral of the story: the helicopter weight is set too light by default but without effective translational lift included, increased weight causes other problems. If BIS doesn't implement translational lift I think it could be done with scripting.

  16. Posted

    The throttle in most helicopters and all turbine helicopters is linked to a governor that attempts to keep the Rotor RPM at 100%. When you increase collective, drag on the main rotor system also increases, which should slow down the rotor RPM if it weren't for the governor. It's important to understand that in flight, rotor RPM changes very little, lift is primarily controlled by collectively changing the pitch of the blades, not the RPM of the rotors. So except for situations such as a governor failure or autorotation, collective changes will cause the aircraft to yaw.

  19. Posted

    If you guys have time, could you provide a little info on how the external load and sling/longline features will be implemented.

    I'm mostly interested in:

    -Whether or not the pilot will be able to look straight down through the skids and use vertical reference flying or will it be done in external views.

    -Will the loads swing under the aircraft or will it be a static fixed point like we have seen in ArmA scripting.

    -Are different length lines/cables implemented or will that be possible with modding?

  20. Posted · Edited by LeftSkidLow

    I absolutely agree Chris and it's funny because those are the same 2 things that bug me the most. I have to wonder if these issues are related to when they made the flight model "lighter" because people were complaining that they barely had any collective remaining by the time the skids left the ground (despite the fact that this is usually how it is in real life). Unfortunately, now my skids leave the ground with barely any collective and ground effect is grossly over exaggerated. I've never done an approach in real life and had ground effect come anywhere close to bumping me back into the air. It's hard to do a normal approach in-game because it feels like flat pitch is stuck collective scenario.

  22. Posted

    Nice dude. The hard part now is to find your first job, hopefully your school can at least let you make phone calls to bring some people in. Now you get to develop all kinds of sneaky tricks like acting as if you're staring out the door but you're actually watching the student, checking the gauges, maybe pulling a circuit breaker out when they aren't looking...

    In all seriousness, just don't get killed dude, this instructing stuff is more dangerous than it appears. Always try to keep your guard up, you will have extremely incompetent students that try to kill you several times each flight and then you'll have good ones that try to kill you when you least expect it. Since I know you're flying 300's: Don't trust motorcycle riders!, especially during startup, autorotations, and take-offs/landings in the curve. I guarantee you at some point their brain will fuck up about which way they are supposed to to turn the throttle and they will either severely over-rev the engine, cut the throttle so fast the engine starts to sputter or quit, or they will droop the rotor RPM at the worst time. 1 more 300 tip, if you are flying a model with 2 fuel tanks, figure out from the mechanic which tank has the gauge sensor. At some point you might put fuel in the tank with the sensor (even fill it) and think you are good to go. Well it takes a few minutes to even out through that tiny cross connect tube and you might have less fuel than you think (learned that one the hard way at night with a very bright red light).

  23. Posted

    FYI, there is no such thing as a Bell 421. It looks to be based mainly on the Bell 412 with a few UH-1Y features like winglets and engine cowlings. A Bell 406 is actually the Bell designation for what is almost always known as OH-58D (US Army Designation).

    A little trick that usually works with Bell Helicopters, if it has 2 blades, the designation will start with 2:

    205 (Huey)

    206 (Jetranger)

    206L (Longranger)

    209 (Cobra)

    212 Twin engine Huey variant

    214 Huey on steroids

    4 Blades:

    406

    407

    412

    417 (Twin 407 concept, never saw the light of day as far as I know)

    429

  25. Posted

    Tip from DNA (dev): Reduce weight artificially with:

    this setCustomWeightRTD -250

    in the choppers init field. they say the chopper is configured a bit on the heavy side.

    I tried this Carl and it was way overkill. I was airborne with something like 20% collective on that green meter. What was weird is I tried a lot of different values including "this setCustomWeightRTD -20" and it didn't change that much.

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